In the context of Thursday’s match, what happend eight years ago in Port of Spain would not matter, Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza said on the eve of second quarter-final against India at the MCG on Thursday. Excerpts.
As a group, how much inspiration will you be taking from the famous 2007 win and what will you be telling to the younger playersIJ
Yeah, that was a long time ago, I think, eight years back. It's a happy memory but you don't want to look back now. We have to focus on the present. We have some good young players in our team, and they have performed (well) so far in the tournament. So hopefully they can come up tomorrow (Thursday) in the middle and deliver their best
This is a big match for you. You will have to do too many things to win this match, but can you specify the one key point that you have to do to win the matchIJ
Our focus is to play good cricket. One or two players can’t change the whole game. So we’re the team now as a fielding, batting and a bowling group. Once we’re all doing good together, we’ll do well. So we are focusing on everywhere, basically, not just in a particular area.
India haven’t lost any game in this World Cup. Do you think it is possible for Bangladesh to beat IndiaIJ
You never know basically. It depends on the day how we’re playing cricket. So hopefully we’ll play our best and let’s see what happens after that.
It is going to be a very exciting match for us because we feel very proud and very good in ourselves. The boys are very relaxed. Hopefully they’ll give their best shot tomorrow.
So far you’ve played fearless cricket but tomorrow is a knockout game. As captain, do you think the fearlessness could take a back seatIJ
No, I think whatever we have done in the last few matches we have to plan the same way because we have been successful. Yes, I still can’t say what is the plan in here, but we have to go by the plan, whatever the plan is. As I said before, we’ll try our best to perform tomorrow.
There’s a debate going on over the Associate nations and Bangladesh came very close to this whole argument whether they should retain their Test status. What kind of support do you think these associate nations should getIJ
I think it’s very difficult for me to answer this question. We just only can do it just playing our cricket, concentrating on our cricket. That’s what I can do, and all depends on the ICC what they’re thinking about this. And I think yes, the associate countries are doing well at the moment, even in this World Cup they played well. As far as our cricket is concerned we are concentrating on tomorrow’s game. The last five, six matches were pretty good for us, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll do our best.